Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Stewart Qua Mill

My brother and I had a very erratic debate yesterday about John Stewart and what he's doing or what he did with Jim Cramer and whether or not it was useful. While my brother, Louis, has a sense of humor, he's also not altogether happy with Stewart. He wants to see some democrats in the hot seat. Now Louis is a business-lawyer guy. He voted for Obama "even though I know he's going to raise me taxes." (He wrote that during the campaign; he still wasn't happy with Obama's budget.) As I've mentioned, he drives an SUV. He's extremely competitive. When I brought up maybe doing a scavanger hunt as part of our parents' birthday party, he said, "Yeah! We can break up into teams and whoever finishes first WINS!"

Did I mention he's my older brother?

Anyway, I give you a full quote pulled from Sullivan and the link to the full blog post on why Stewart is a capitalist. I like it. And it means I can blog and go do my taxes.

"Some have called Jon Stewart's argument "anti-capitalist." We disagree. If anything, he makes an impassioned plea for an economy that functions the way we're told capitalism ought to: a producer makes something worth purchasing, and a consumer decides to buy it. You get ahead by hard work and keen insight. If anything, Cramer's defense of 30 percent returns that have evaporated for everyone who didn't cash out in 2006 demonstrates that he and the financial experts he came on the show to represent have lost touch with real capitalism. They came to believe that just moving the money around for eight years and hoping the bottom wouldn't fall out could replace the laws of supply and demand."

This is so true. I was thinking just the same thing when I was wondering about retention bonuses and making things. (See David Leonhardt for why they're unnecessary, as opposed to just blowing the top of your head off because of course it's unnecessary to pay people to stay who've already left and of course why do you want to retain people who aren't very good at their jobs.)

In any case, there it is. Forgive this as not my best post, but I remain a Stewart fan and I have to get to those taxes.

No comments: